In the 21st Century Digital Age in which servers and applications are increasingly interconnected via public, hybrid and on-premises cloud networks; virtualization and Internet of Things (IoT), organizations require near flawless security, system availability and reliability.

Unplanned downtime irrespective of the reason is unacceptable and costly due to its negative impact on productivity. When network servers, OSs and applications are unavailable, business ceases. This has a domino effect on corporate enterprises, customers, business partners and suppliers. Four nines – 99.99% uptime is now the minimum reliability required by 79% of organizations.

IBM Z Next Features

The IBM Z, the 14th generation of IBM’s industry-leading mainframe technology, advances the already solid and robust security and reliability features inherent in the platform over the last decade. It also amps up the processing power to new levels. The IBM z14 has the ability to process 12 Billion encrypted transactions daily. It accomplishes this via the industry’s fastest microprocessor and a new scalable system structure that delivers a 35 percent capacity increase for traditional workloads and a 50 percent capacity increase for Linux workloads compared to the previous generation IBM z13.The system can support:

More than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day on a single system.

• Three times the memory of the z13 for faster response times, greater throughput and accelerated analytics performance. With 32TB of memory, IBM Z offers one of the largest memory footprints in the industry.

Three times faster I/O and accelerated transaction processing compared to the z13 to drive growth in data, transaction throughput and lower response time.

Pervasive Encryption for rock solid security.

The ability to run Java workloads 50 percent faster than x86 alternatives

Improved Storage Area Network response time with zHyperLink, delivering 10x latency reduction compared to the z13. This cuts application response time in half – enabling businesses to do much more work such as real-time analytics or interact with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cloud applications within the same transaction, without changing a single line of application code.

IBM also previewed new z/OS software that provides foundational capabilities for private cloud service delivery. This allows organizations to transform from an IT cost center to a value-generating service provider. When available, these capabilities will include the support of workflow extensions for IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS and real-time SMF analytics infrastructure support.

For the ninth year in a row, corporate enterprise users said IBM’s z Systems Enterprise mainframe class server achieved near flawless reliability, recording less than 10 seconds of unplanned per server downtime each month. Among mainstream servers, IBM Power Systems devices and the Lenovo x86 platform delivered the highest levels of reliability/uptime among 14 server hardware and 11 different server hardware virtualization platforms.

Those are the results of the ITIC 2017 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability survey which polled 750 organizations worldwide during April/May 2017.

Among mainstream hardware platforms, IBM Power Systems and Lenovo System x running Linux have least amount of unplanned downtime 2.5 and 2.8 minutes per server/per year of any mainstream Linux server platforms.

88% of IBM Power Systems and 87% of Lenovo System x users running RHEL, SuSE or Ubuntu Linux experience fewer than one unplanned outage per server, per year.

Tenly two percent of IBM and Lenovo servers recorded >4 hours of unplanned per server/per annum downtime; followed by six percent of HPE servers; eight percent of Dell servers and 10% of Oracle servers.

IBM and Lenovo hardware and the Linux operating system distributions were either first or second in every reliability category, including virtualization and security.

Lenovo Takes Top Marks for Technical Service and Support: Lenovo tech support the best followed by Cisco and IBM

Some 66% of survey respondents said aged hardware (3 ½+ years old) had a negative impact on server uptime and reliability vs. 21% that said it has not impacted reliability/uptime. This is 22% increase from the 44% who said outmoded hardware negatively impacted uptime in 2014

Reliability continues to decline for the fifth year in a row on the HP ProLiant and Oracle’s SPARC & x86 hardware and Solaris OS. Reliability on the Oracle platforms declined slightly mainly due to aging. Many Oracle hardware customers are eschewing upgrades, opting instead to migrate to rival platforms.

Some 16% of Oracle customers rated service & support as Poor or Unsatisfactory. Dissatisfaction with Oracle licensing and pricing policies remains consistently high for the last three years.

Only 1% of Cisco, 1% of Dell, 1% of IBM and Lenovo, 3% of HP, 3% of Fujitsu and 4% of Toshiba users gave those vendors “Poor” or “Unsatisfactory” customer support ratings.

Protecting and maintaining brand reputation is essential for any company. As a result, it is essential for enterprises to proactively monitor and manage all activities- operational and experiential – that influence a consumer’s overall brand experience. Ignorance involving any aspect of business operations will result in ongoing, significant consequences. It will damage a corporation’s reputation; adversely impact customers; result in operational inefficiencies, business losses and potential litigation; and even criminal penalties. It also raises the corporation’s risk of non-compliance with crucial local, state, federal and international industry regulations.

This is especially true for firms in fast-paced, competitive and highly regulated industries, including but not limited to the food, hospitality, hotel, restaurant, retail and transportation vertical markets. Typically, these organizations have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of stores, restaurants and hotels located in multiple, geographically remote locations. They must collect, aggregate and analyze a veritable data deluge in real-time. And they must respond proactively and take preventative measures to correct issues as they arise. Organizations that do business across multiple states and internationally, face other challenges. They must synchronize and integrate processes and data across the entire enterprise. Businesses must also ensure that every restaurant, hotel or retail store in the chain, achieves and maintains compliance with a long list of complex standards, health and safety laws.

ITIC’s research indicates that companies across a wide range of industries are deploying a new class of Quality Experience Management software. These solutions let businesses access the latest information on daily operations, policies, procedures and safety mechanisms in an automated fashion. They also let companies take preventative and remedial action irrespective of time, distance or physical location.